originally a college blog for my environmental ethics class, now offering further enlightenment about environmental issues

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Our Economy’s Dirty Laundry

Any talk of the environment thus far has been unavoidably coupled with economics. Mention of environmentalism or “going green” would seem to be tangled up with either a diminishing of the economic system, loss of jobs, or – more rooted in actuality – revamping of the economic system. Our economic system is notorious for its adherence to corporations, “big business.” Corporations are driven by the vast engine of consumer satisfaction and are also responsible for big time environmental destruction. One need not even mention the Exxon Valdez spill in the Prince William Sound, or the American “hamburger habit” that lives off a continuous flow of South American beef acquired by the burning of millions of acres of ancient rain forests. The existence of these corporations depend on maximizing profits, which leads to continuous growth (the impractical golden rule of economics), which leads to the encouragement of more consumption, which we all know leads to larger landfills and more pollution and so on and so on.

Traditionally the environmental movement has sought to free the rain forests and protect endangered species, but a large group of disenfranchised individuals seems to have been overlooked. Our economic system perpetuates archaic forms of racism and injustice towards people of low socioeconomic status. A relatively new and equally as important sector of environmentalism comes into play – environmental justice. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.

More recently corporations have been charged with generating environmental racism, the “deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities.” It has been found that there is a pattern of placing hazardous facilities in black and Native American communities,” as well as dumping hazardous wastes in third world countries. Libertarian pioneer Milton Friedman claims the goal of corporations is to make profit, and that any other agenda would be spending someone else’s money “to promote a social objective.” Friedman also thinks that taxation is a form of unjust socialism, so that’s as far as his input can be valued. Despite how unpopular it might appear in a polity fueled by corporate aid, the job of government is to protect the people. So, our society has enacted laws and regulations to protect people from injustice – a concept that makes big business and libertarians cringe. But what’s twisted is that now the laws might not even be enough to keep corporations under control. Third world farmers are displaced from their homes via starvation or moved off by pressure or force from big business, a process that is further begotten by corrupted government in bed with such big business. Another huge problem in our solidifying global society is the psychological fear of falling down a class; and this quietly fuels the unsustainable system of “continued growth.”

What’s more is that in our country there’s the almost ignorant fluffing off of the idea that racism still exists. Racism seems like a problem that was tackled and conquered by Martin Luther King, a problem that our parent’s generation felt. My president is black, how can racism still be around? Surely racism doesn’t exist now, and if you are racist, then socially you’re weird, hateful, and out of the loop. To be accepting of all races and people is in vogue. This is all wonderful, but somehow the racism that does still go on is glazed over by this idea that racism doesn’t exist.

Atgeld Gardens is a housing project in Chicago where 10,000 residents, mostly African American, live surrounded by sources of intense pollution on every side. The area is plagued by one of the highest cancer rates in the nation, and atrocities like rampant disease, and birth defects such as babies being born without heads and limbs. This community is a testament to continued environmental racism. Statistically, three out of every five black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled waste sites near by. The National Minority Environmental Leadership Summit met to develop a comprehensive and tangible national agenda of action that will help reshape and redirect environmental policy-making in the U.S. to fully embrace the concerns of minority Americans. A national pattern was found in which “race proved to be the most influential variable tests in association with the location of commercially hazardous waste facilities.” Companies dump in ethic neighborhoods to avoid the lawsuits they would incur if they dumped in white communities because the poor communities are figured to be legally and politically powerless, or they may not know they can do anything about their living conditions. The corporations perpetuate this institutionalized problem among lower income communities who come to believe that they can’t do anything about their situation. “Wherever you find working class, ethnic communities, you find environmental injustice.” Needless to say, this is one of the darkest corners of American civilization.

The sociological effect that our economy has on lower income people is just another reminder of direct how our relationship to the earth really is. They can’t “vote with their feet” and just move out, like first class citizens can. And even still, the proposition that people should just move out of a neighborhood that has a tainted ecosystem adds insult to injury. Should we even settle to see people land and homes be allowed to such degradation? Peggy Shepard, a leader of WHE ACT (West Harlem Environmental Action), says “we need to fight for environmental protection or the land we seek might not be of any real value once it’s returned.” Again adding more insult to injury, Indian reservations are seen as good dump sites by firms because “they are considered sovereign entities not subject to local or state environmental restrictions.” One Indian reservation near a nuclear waste producer in Oklahoma reports nine-legged frogs, four-legged chickens, two-headed fish, and babies born without brains or eyes. The fact that we let this occur without guilt or repercussion -just another externality – is horrifying.

There have been watershed events in the environmental justice movement. “Mother of the Superfund” Lois Gibbs’ triumph in getting national recognition for her battle against the state to get 21,000 tons of toxic waste removed from her town of Love Canal and her eventual creation of the Superfund Act. In North Carolina, 500 arrests for the non-violent civil disobedience of the 1982 protesting against a new toxic landfill and toxic soil laced with the carcinogen polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in an African American community. Little by little, grassroots movements like these gain more attention and put more light on the issue that was once just seen as the trivial consequence of the big business system.

The remnants of historically institutionalized racism and oppression of non-whites and lower income people coupled with the massive expansion of the petrochemical industry since World War II churn out this social phenomena of the location of lower income, segregated communities to carry the burden of living in these sordid conditions. This is environmental injustice. It is unjust to the people, unjust to the environment, and also unjust to those who feel the effects that a contaminated ecosystem brings to other ecosystems and other areas nearby. Those people are you and I. The problem of environmental injustice may be coming to light, but it also illuminates the deep-seated root of unsustainable practices and an intrinsically faulty materials economy. The solution is, by initiation of grassroots movements (Majora Carter is a wonderfully inspiring pioneer in this field), more sustainable infrastructure, more community involvement, more education, more governmental involvement and restriction where needed, and better economic planning. The idea that it is “anti-American” to “impose morals and values” about the environment on business and other people might be the most toxic mentality of them all. This goes beyond any one person’s needs or wants or beliefs, but is rooted in science and reality. Too long has the top down approach reigned supreme, now it’s time to fix the problems it’s caused from the bottom up.